Kill List
by RipredtheGnawer
Summary: "'They can't hurt me. I'm not like the rest of you. There's no one left I love,' Johanna says, and frees her hand with an impatient shake." How did that come about? Johanna's POV, a series of one-shots.
1. Nightmare

Nightmare

"Come on, Jo!" Aspen calls, running ahead of her. She puts on an extra burst of speed, bolstered by fear, to catch up with her best friend, to quiet him so that the Careers don't hear.

"Wait!" She hisses, grabbing his shoulder and clapping her hand over his mouth. Heart pounding, she drags him behind a boulder. "Shhh!" She knows they're coming. "Don't…move…"

They sit there, as still as death while the pack of killers tramp by. Then, when they're almost gone, Aspen coughs. There's a stampede of running feet and a flashing blade, and then blackness.

Johanna Mason sits up in bed, screaming as though she has actually returned to the arena. "Just a nightmare," she breathes, relaxing again. She can still see the blood, hear the shrieks. She's not sure why she's so terrified by the dreams, since they never actually kill her. Yet.

Falling back to sleep is not going to be easy, obviously. If she's honest with herself, Johanna doesn't want to. But the Victory Tour starts tomorrow. The citizens of the Capitol will want to see her up and about, energized. She's not interested in pleasing them, but she knows there will be consequences if she can't be satisfactory.

With quick, alert steps, she crosses to the bathroom and opens the cabinet. Everything in her new house has impeccable uniformity, all clean and shiny. In the bathroom especially, the metal is perfectly white. There's no diversity whatsoever.

Johanna pops the lid on a remedial pill bottle, swallowing two tablets dry. She settles back into the huge, fluffy mattress as the medicines sink in, her fear subsiding.


	2. Bribe

Bribe

The Capitol audience loves her. No matter if she's less than ecstatic; all they see is the victor. The winner. The girl who tricked her contestants into leaving her alone before she killed them all.

But that night, it all changes. Keena calls her to the sitting room, abandoning her in the presence of the icy-cold, snake-eyed President Snow.

"Miss Mason," he says, getting right to the heart of the matter, "I have a business proposition for you."

"Yeah?" she replies, figuring that it's a safe answer.

"Yes." Johanna can see that this esteemed man is evaluating her, deciding how to reel her in. "It involves money – more money than you could ever have imagined."

Ah. Now she knows what's happening. She's filled with revulsion at the very idea of what he's suggesting, this forced prostitution. "I don't need money," she tells the president, making no effort to hide her disgust. "I've already got more than I need."

"I'm only asking you to consider. I assure you, the benefits are enormous." It's apparent from his tone that refusal is not allowed but, somehow, Johanna dares to do just that.

"No." It's apparent from _her_ tone that there will be no further discussion of the topic, but she can see the flicker of danger in Snow's eyes. "Thank you, but _no_."


	3. Mother

Mother

The Victory Tour finishes, more horrible than Johanna expected, though nothing worse happens, for which she's glad. It's not until a month after her return that things begin to heat up.

It starts with someone tripping. An unexpected, slippery root, a foot in the wrong place. One bent saw blade later, Pola Mason lies on the muddy forest floor with a tree branch smashed into her skull. The medics are too late, and despite the young woman's demands that they save her mother, nothing can be done.

One down, four to go.


	4. Father

Father

Johanna sits wearily in the chair outside her house, the rain falling on her face and arms, soaking her thoroughly. The other inhabited dwellings have warm lights in the windows but she can't bring herself to go inside. The rain is cold, freezing her mind so that she can't focus on anything.

"Johanna, please," her father begs. "Join us." He hovers just inside the door, his features haggard with grief though two months have passed.

She looks back at him, at his pleading expression. She's tempted to refuse, but he's her family. She can't shut him out. So she rises and enters the warmth of the house, sitting down at the table for dinner.

Minutes later she runs out again, tears on her face mingling with the rain. She flies down the streets of her district, skidding to a stop to bang on the door of a nondescript building, the same in every way save the red cross over the door frame.

Pedestrians stare at Johanna Mason, their newest victor, as she pulls the medical worker down the road to the Victor's Village. Inside, amid the lights and supposed safety, the food on the heavily laden table has been scattered on the floor in a mélange. A boy, her brother, sobs in the corner.

Her father writhes on the carpet with the wine bleeding into the design. Only minutes ago had it been filled to the brim. Johanna wonders with malaise how, exactly, the entire world became so incorrigible? How did the house, the symbol of warmth and light, become as cold and dark as the rain that continues to pound?

She knows it was poison, but that's not what she's asking. She's asking who's responsible for this? As the man's hand grows cold in hers, she realizes that she knows the answer. President Snow. But no – the fault isn't his, at least not directly.

It's Johanna's fault. She knows she killed her father.

Two down, three to go.


	5. Brother

**A/N: Super sorry for the longish wait.**

* * *

Reaping Day, once again. The danger two children will soon be in is so eminent that Johanna won't speak to anybody. This is her second year as a mentor and it's no better than her first. She'll do her best to impart her knowledge, she'll confer every skill she has, but inevitably someone else will die.

She's right. Someone does die, and it's so much worse than she had ever imagined. "Oak Mason," the escort calls for the boy's name. She watches her little brother make his way up to the stage and she knows there's nothing she can do. Snow's going to kill her family off, one by one. It's a surprisingly simple fact.

And just as Johanna knew it would, the spear enters Oak's heart and the cannon fires, emptying the arena of one more tribute. Just one more name among hundreds of others that have died over the years, to be forgotten in the bloodlust of the next Games.

She cries in front of the television screen, cursing herself, Snow, and the whole world.

"He was only twelve!"

She screams, but no one comes. She is the only one who really cares, and so it is only fitting that she is the one to blame.

Three down, two to go.


	6. Mentor

Johanna Mason is an underling of President Snow. She'll do whatever he wants, anything, if only he'll end this living nightmare. If only he'll stop killing her loved ones.

But her pleas come too late. The next death is already arranged, and this time it's Keena whose coffin is lowered into the ground bearing her charred, blackened body. Johanna watches the shovelfuls of dirt fall over the wood to conceal it and erase from the earth every trace of her mentor.

What's happening, she wonders? Why her? Is she the only one who ever refused to become the lowest of the many slaves of the Capitol? That can't be true, but for some inscrutable reason, Snow has chosen her to suffer.

At least now she won't have to obey that snake. He no longer has any hold over her.

Four down, one to go.


	7. Lover

She thinks she's safe. She thinks that everyone will be all right, now that they are all dead. Everyone she cared about – her family, her mentor – they're gone. So nobody else will die.

Johanna never knew it was possible to be so wrong.

Aspen Fellshore, friend and, during better times, more than that. He meant so much to her and yet she took great care to reveal none of her affection for him. It was for his own safety that she broke their relationship to bits. She knew she had good reasons for what she'd done, but the look in his eyes haunted her. The only thing that kept her sane was her motive – he'd live. He'd live if he weren't close to her.

Now, she wishes she'd kept him by her side. Maybe that would have been better. Maybe then he wouldn't have picked that fight with the men in the alley.

She doesn't speak her mind when they tell her what happened. They say he fought them in darkness, as drunk as they were. But Johanna knows that Aspen didn't fight. He never drank. She knows those men weren't drunk, either. And she is absolutely positive that they weren't from District 7.

But what can she do? What can she ever do? He's dead. Nothing she did has helped.

Five down, all gone.


	8. Rebellion

It turns out that there's one way she can avenge all these deaths, these lives lost on her account. Her kill list, as if she were still in the Games. In a way, she supposes, this _is_ another Game. Just another twisted game that a sly, snaky man with puffy lips thinks it's amusing to play.

She hears about it just hours after history is made, after the handful of berries and the double victory. After two children think they've won, when every victor knows that such a deed is impossible. A whispered word, a furtive glance, and Johanna knows what she must do. She marches over to the Gamemaker in the middle of the party, dragging him off to the side. She won't take no for an answer.

"A rebellion? There's a rebellion?" She can see he's taken aback by her ferocity. "You listen to me. If there's going to be a war here, I. Want. In."


	9. No One Left

The masked, gloved, white-robed figures pour the water over her body. She screams at them – foul names, curses, exactly what they are and what they deserve. Nothing happens, of course. They push the buttons, connect the wires, and she grows rigid on the cold metal table, pain lancing through her, freezing her thoughts. Again and again, the water and electricity and questions. _Torture_, her mind whispers. _They're torturing you_.

"No," she mutters to herself, hunched in her cell during a brief respite, the familiar screams of a blonde teenage boy echoing off the walls. "No, not torture. Not torture. Aspen… Oak… Keena… that's torture." She winces as a particularly loud cry splits the air. "This isn't torture."

It turns out it is, though, or as close as anything can match it. President Snow appears again, attempting to browbeat her, make her see that there is no point in resisting. This time she doesn't make a sound. She's learned over the years that no matter how helpless she looks, a silent person will radiate an aura of strength. So she bottles her wrath over the strife she and others have endured.

She thought that, finally, everyone she loved was dead. They must be, if they were doing this to her instead of forcing her to witness more murders. There was no one left to kill, so they resorted to other means. This, in her opinion, was much more humane.

But once again, Johanna Mason was wrong. She knew it when she was rescued by District 13, trained to be a soldier. When she watched the war play out from her bed in the ward that she thought should be labeled "head cases." Because she must be crazy to think that the killing is going to stop.

There was one last person that President Snow wanted to kill, she realizes, one last person to hurt beyond repair. Her. One of the victors who refused to play by his rules. But the snake made a mistake. He wounded her so deeply that there is nothing more to take.

Except, of course, for her own life. And now that the war is over, now that the rebels have won, nobody's going to do that.

So Johanna Mason, the last victor and tribute of District 7, wonders what to do, now that there is absolutely nobody left.


End file.
